Potted histories: Welsh rabbit

It's National Welsh Rabbit Day - or should that be Rarebit?

If you’re unsure about what to cook for dinner tonight, here’s an idea. September 3 is National Welsh Rabbit Day – and biting into this dish of oozingly cheesy toast tastes just as good today as it did to our ancestors centuries ago.

The name is a misnomer – no doubt to the disappointment of hundreds of hungry tourists who order it in British cafés every year, there’s not a scrap of coney in this comestible.

The moniker is, in fact, part of an age-old British tradition - having a dig at the Welsh. In the 18th century, when references to the dish began to proliferate, “Welsh” often meant something substandard or fake. “Welsh rabbit”, the joke thus went, was the closest the impoverished Welsh would get to having meat for supper (don't feel obliged to laugh).

Far from being a regional specialty, Welsh rabbit was enjoyed up and down the country – but it probably did have a particular following in Wales, where there is a long history of revering the blissful combination of cheese and toast. A 16th century tale tells how God asked St Peter to get rid of the Welsh from heaven, as they kept causing a ruckus (perhaps Cardiff City was losing a lot of matches at the time). St Peter stomped outside the Pearly Gates and shouted “caws pobi!” – the Welsh for “toasted cheese”. All the Welshmen tumbled excitedly out, and the gates were slammed shut behind them.

Though the “Welsh” part of the dish’s name seems clear-cut, an etymological issue as sticky as melted Cheddar surrounds the second word: is it rabbit, or rarebit? The earliest reference we have to the dish, in 1725, is quite clearly rabbit: it’s not until over fifty years later that the mysterious alternative spelling starts to twitch its whiskers. John Ayto in his A Diner’s Dictionary writes that rarebit was probably “an attempt to folk-etymologize [the name] – that is, to reinterpret the odd and inappropriate-sounding rabbit as something more fitting to the dish". The new name caught on and references to it multiplied a little like – well, rabbits.

Also breeding at a terrific speed were variations of the dish. Though the easiest early recipes simply instruct that good English cheese be melted on top of toast, others call for the cheese to be melted and pre-mixed with ingredients such as flour, ale, wine, mustard or cayenne pepper before being poured on the bread. Often, these recipes have alternative regional names such as “Yorkshire rabbit” or “English rabbit” – Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management for example, includes a recipe for “Scotch” rabbit – though there’s no hard or fast rules for what was included in each, other than copious amounts of cheese.

Though today the dish is often considered a last resort when the cupboard is bare, at one point Welsh rabbit was the height of sophisticated eating. In Alan Davidson's OxfordCompanion to Food, mention is made of how in Paris at the turn of the 20th century, Anglophiles would flock to a certain restaurant to enjoy le welsh - accompanied, of course, by a tankard of British ale.

Whether you eat Scotch rarebit or Welsh rabbit, in London or Gay Paree, is entirely up to you. But regardless of the name, this is one dish worth having in your repertoire – even if you do have to pass up eternal life to do so.